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Comment by njibhu | Hacker News Reader

I'm not really answering your question here, but sideloading allow alternatives with different goals than google play.

For example F-Droid is actually very big particularly with users trying to get rid of google services on their phones. But it's a marketplace for opensource apps and services, which most commercial apps are not.

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F-Droid architecture is terrible (it could take them weeks to build an app, and since they build all apps updates are severely delayed) and their app is a buggy mess. In other words, F-Droid not being widely used is not an indication of people not wanting to use a third party store per se even if it only carries open source apps.

Now we know the benefits that the google playstore provides.

You can host your own fdroid repos and use Aurora Droid as client instead.

e.g. Quasseldroid is distributed that way. The result is an awesome store UI, instantly deployed updates, and independence from the Play Store.

The only disadvantage is that, because it's not preinstalled, no one knows about it.

People want a plug and play solution, not to have to research F-Droid client alternatives and then install third party repos which they don't know if they can trust.

Sure, but now you're saying the actual value of the Play Store is that it is preinstalled. Not the technology it provides.

I said if I Google "F-Droid" I should get to a webpage that contains an app that works properly and that comes with good repos preloaded. Similar to how Steam is installed on PCs.

Instead I get a crappy app with very outdated repos. That's not good enough.

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